Scribe’s Pen Box

This scribe’s pen box, of elongated octagonal form, is decorated on its exterior with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl and bone inlay in a design of interlocking trefoil motifs. The interior of the box has a removable shallow tray with silver mounts, which would have been used to store the scribe’s writing utensils. By the second half of the 10th century AH/16th century CE, Ottoman woodworkers had begun to employ inlays of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, two materials that were technically difficult to work. The tortoiseshell was generally laid over the metal foil to give it a lustrous quality, and mother-of-pearl plaques were frequently inlaid with black mastic to further emphasise their luminosity. The fine quality decoration upon this pen box suggests its commissioning by a member of the Ottoman courtly elite and was probably used by an important scribe.